


Creativity for Creativity's Sake

by kitschykody



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, but i thought i would publish it somewhere, this is writing for class
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-04 14:53:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15843582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitschykody/pseuds/kitschykody
Summary: A collection of short stories written for a class.  Various characters, significantly less gay than normal.





	1. Silver

Silver is the most irritating color. Contrary to popular belief, silver doesn’t hurt me, but it’s more… bothersome, like listening to a recording of someone in a really loud and really monotone voice saying the word ‘moist’ or ‘creamy’ over and over. When I was looking at cars with one of my friends, they thought it would be ironic or hilarious or both if I was to get any one of the many silver cars in the lot. Looking back, that day was miserable because of the heat, but also because of the sheer amount of fake, shiny silver that we stared at all day long.   
That’s another thing. Fake silver. It just sets me on edge, because I assume it is real silver. There’s no real good way to tell if the metal is real or not besides touching it, and common sense of course. Found out the hard way that Dad’s Olympic medal was real when I wore it for a Halloween one year and was more irritable than usual all day. That was the first time Mrs. Rame gave me a demerit, my attitude being apparently ‘unbearable’ or something like that. She usually loves me, stopping me by the pond on my way off of school grounds just to chat, or to remind me that hats are not allowed on school property, fashion statement or not.   
It’s more than just a fashion statement, but I don’t tell anyone that because it’s just easier to pretend that I like wearing something that makes my hair both flat and dented at the same time. Whatever. Better than trying to cover a sunburn with green makeup.   
Point is, that just because someone tells you that something is true, doesn’t mean it is. Like vampires and silver. What would make someone think that a silver bullet is more lethal to me than it would be to anyone else?


	2. Where Were You Last Night?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Where were you last night?

Kit is sitting by the pool, one leg tucked up underneath him when his phone rings. It’s sitting on the bench by his hip, but a casual glance at the first ring tells him that it’s an unknown number. Even with his work, he shouldn’t be getting unknown numbers calling him. After last night, he doesn’t want to talk to anyone. The annoying ringtone comes again, and with a sigh, Kit scoops up the phone but waits for whoever is on the line to say something first.   
“Hello. You are receiving a call from an individual being held at the New York Jail. If you would like to accept this call, please hit 3. To block this call, please press # or end this call.”  
The distorted voice in the phone is female, but with his business, Kit doesn’t trust that it’s not someone who is looking for him after he sold them out. The whisper of a thought crosses his mind and he hits the number 3 despite his better judgment.   
“Oh my god, I didn’t think you would answer.”  
Kit tenses, and says nothing. He doesn’t know what he can say. What can he say when the most important person in his life swore they would be together last night and now he is getting a phone call from jail. He takes a breath, feels the tightness in his chest that cannot be remedied by this simple phone call. He can’t tell if the feeling is anger or disappointment or something else entirely but he has to know.   
“Where were you last night?”


	3. Bakery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CCD returns! In reality, Drew is a roomate but also boyfriend, but yknow, gotta make it school appropriate or whatever.

The smell of cinnamon and sugar is ever present inside my bakery. It reminds me of fall, the cool air providing a contrast almost as delicious as the smell. But right now it’s warm inside and outside of the small establishment, which isn’t near as nice.   
“Chase! Long time no see!”  
“Hey Charlie. Ready for the lunch rush?”   
“Yes sir! I didn’t really expect this place to have a lunch rush y’know, since we don’t really do lunch but I’m prepared for it today!”  
Charlie, the newest hire, beams her brilliant smile at me as I enter through the front door for once. I had forgotten my (well, Drew’s) coffee mug from the back, and I knew if I came home without it he would kill me. Despite his lack of sharing skills, Drew wasn’t a bad roommate, by any means. Always easily bribed with anything that came out of an oven. It was a miracle that he didn’t weigh 600 pounds with how much he ate. Which reminds me. “Can I also get one of those green cupcakes?” I ask, biting my tongue to keep back how I had decided to make green icing this morning because I was thinking about the color of her eyes.   
“Sure!” Charlie chirps. She was so bubbly, I can’t help but smile a little at her and her swishing brown pony tail. 

It doesn’t take me too long to slip into the back and get Drew’s travel mug, and when I come back out the bakery is empty, but the door was just closing and Charlie was washing her hands in the sink. She turns the water off and flicks her hands at me, little specks of water hitting my cheeks. “Is that any way to treat your boss?” I joke, wiping my face off as I returned to the other side of the counter. On instinct maybe, Charlie heads over with the cupcake and punches it into the iPad register. Her fingers glide through the motions as she registers one cupcake from the inventory, but doesn’t turn the screen around or ask for payment.   
“Not going to make me pay?” I smirk, taking the bag she hands me.   
“Well, don’t tell my boss, but sometimes I don’t make the cute ones pay.”  
The smirk is still on my face but it feels sort of stuck there and time seems to freeze. I didn’t think I had been so obvious, but with the way Charlie was looking at me, her cheeks just a little too pink to be from the warmth of the store, I was wrong. Ok. Be cool, Chase, be cool.   
“Your secret’s safe with me,” I say. “I’ll see you later, Charlie.”

I thought that was smooth, but apparently, as Drew cackles from his spot on the couch with green icing staining his lips, it could not have gone worse. I sigh, face in my hands. How was I possibly going to fix this?


	4. Sunset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> implied gay mermaid

Sunset was my favorite time to be near the surface. I’m not supposed to be up there then, because it’s also the favorite time for barges and pleasure cruises to be out, and looking particularly at the water. The dolphin cruises mostly stick to the same route though, and the dolphins and I are both aware of it. I’m smart enough (old enough) to know where the rest don’t go, know where I won’t be seen.   
Have you ever seen the sunset from just five feet below the waves? The ocean herself is showing off too, turning a bright teal that I never get to see when I’m normally allowed closer to the surface. The water moves in her typical restless manner, with streaks of gold and bright orange flashing through. It’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I can’t even accurately describe the perfection of the ocean during that golden hour.   
It gets prettier the closer you get, too, and I just can’t resist tonight, seeing the pink teases of the sky from under the waves. I find the rock ledge near the outskirts of the lagoon, where the surfers usually stay away from because it’s just outside of the perfect wave zone. Once I make sure I’m not upsetting anyone, I break the surface of the water just enough to see a stunning sunset. It’s breathtaking, and the rocks are warm as I lean my head back against them, wishing with my whole heart that it was back when we were allowed to relax and sunbathe on these rocks. Before surfers discovered our lagoon before humans decided our home was somewhere that could profit them, and it was now theirs, not ours.   
“Oh”  
I startle and sink to my eyes when I hear a soft noise. Stupid. I’ll never live this down when my family finds out.   
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you, I didn’t realize anyone else was here…”   
A sniffle, and some shuffling, and a girl, not any older than I’ve been told I look in human years, pokes her head over the edge of the rock adjacent to the one I had relaxed against. Her hair was dark and wavy, the effect the salt air had on most. Her eyes were the same color as the sea I usually saw, a dark blue, almost black, almost the same color as the rock she was sitting on. I want to stay. She seems harmless. Her face is wet in a way that can’t be from the sea spray, but I can’t, I’m in enough trouble as it is. She’s just staring at me, waiting for some sort of response. I nod at her, and then turn tail and run. I was not about to find out what humans thought of mermaids in this day and age. 

But I still can’t stop thinking about her.


	5. Ostentatious, Crestfallen, Lovely, Brook, & Tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> make your own prompt

As I run through the trees I barely pay any attention to them. I’m breathing so hard I can feel my heartbeat in my face, the cool air making my throat burn and my nose run from the exertion. This started as a trail run, but then I heard the dogs behind me, I didn’t know why they were following me, but I could hear them gaining on me and I don’t think I’ve ever run this fast. It’s still dark out as I trip down the side of the hill, losing control of my own two feet. I gasp on reflex when the tumble takes me into a small brook.   
After that, I don’t remember anything for what must have been a while, because when I wake up I’m in that brook still, confused, and staring up at trees so ostentatious you would think I had ended up in a painting, not soaked and shivering in a brook in a forest. The sun is shining, it’s probably mid-morning, several hours after my 5 am run.   
The forest is right next to my house. I don’t hear dogs anymore. I don’t think I’m hurt. I try to sit up, and my head throbs. I guess I should be glad I’m just soaked and not drowned. How did I get here? I swore up and down to Henry that I am not crazy, because I’m not, but when I finally pick myself up and make it back to the house, he doesn’t look relieved to see me. No, crestfallen may be a better descriptor. More than sad. More than disappointed. Crestfallen, with an air of reluctance as he helps be wipe the blood from the gash on my forehead. We don’t talk until he’s walking away, and I’m gingerly touching my forehead where he applied the bandage.   
“It’s lovely weather, don’t you think?” I ask because I just can’t deal with the silence. “Just perfect for a run, you think?”   
He freezes in the doorway of the kitchen, and I don’t wait to see what happens next, because the last thing I want is a lecture about taking my meds, so I hop off of the counter and turn towards the couch, gently laying down and curling up, ready to ignore, ignore, ignore until sleep came to me.


	6. I Don't Sleep In A Coffin: My Life As A Teenage Vampire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Longer continuation of Silver, First formal project of the semester

My parents are supposed to be the only ones who know that I am a vampire. Though, my older sister knows too, she was the one who picked me up after it happened. My younger sister, Sarah, wasn’t officially told, but that’s because she’s so talkative we don’t trust her not to blab to her thousands of best friends about it. She knows I have medicine that I have to take every hour or two, and that they’re a really pretty color but she is not allowed, under any circumstance, to touch them. My parents are a little paranoid about my secret. They’re paranoid about a lot of things.   
“Thalia, be careful! You’re flammable!” as I’m cooking dinner, and “Thalia, did you remember to take your pills?” coming every hour of the day. “Do you want to bring tomato soup with you again? I know it’s not quite the right color, but it doesn’t look all that different if you just put a little of it in…” They’re always paranoid about me and my bloodthirstiness, or my flammability, or my distaste of silver. Or that, hell forbid, I’ll tell someone my deepest and darkest secret. Vanessa, my older sister, always rolls her eyes for me when she’s home to hear this because she knows that as much research as they did when I first got bitten, no one besides me really knows how to help me function in normal society. 

“Thalia, are you even listening to me?” Sophia, my best friend, is looking at me like I grew fangs or something, and I run my tongue over my front teeth to verify she can’t actually see them.   
“Uhm… No?” I try, trying to look innocent and failing.   
“I was asking you if you were going to sleep over after the Homecoming game?” She tilts her head, expecting a yes because we were friends and friends slept over at each other’s houses after school functions, but also knowing how strict my parents were and how many times before they had said no.   
“Actually, yeah!” I smile, looking like it’s not going to be a problem, and Sophia grins, continuing to chatter about what she’s planning on wearing to the dance itself, what they’re going to eat after, and who all is coming. I zone out again, crunching on a rice cake, staring out at the sunlit pond in the front lawn.   
I am so screwed. 

“You are so screwed,” Vanessa says as I lay upside down on her bed, letting a blood pill dissolve in my mouth, after telling her about my day. “What made you think Mom and Dad were going to let you go to Homecoming? Much less, go somewhere after the dance?” She shakes her head, pushing her books back into their spots on the shelf. Plopping onto the bed next to me, she asks “Are you just going to back out last minute, or?”   
“...Would you cover for me if I snuck out?”   
“...”  
“You’re not saying no?”  
“....I claim complete innocence” She sighs, her feet piling on top of my thighs, and holding a furry pink pillow to her chest.   
“You mean ignorance.” I correct her, and quickly find my face full of a furry pillow.   
“Don’t be such a bat” Vanessa rolls her eyes at me, but the corners of her mouth turn up a little as she says it, enjoying her own pun maybe a little too much. 

Dinner that evening is normal, quiet, as Mom hands me a tall glass of “cranberry juice” after she pours herself a glass of red wine, and gives Sarah some actual cranberry juice. Blood, you see, is far darker than the horror movies make it look, so it looks a lot more like cranberry juice than tomato juice or any other red liquid people like to replace it with. Especially in bigger quantities. “You’re looking a little pale” she hums as her excuse for the absolutely massive glass, tucking my hair behind my ear. The spray tan makes it so no one can tell how deathly pale I really am, so I don’t know what she means by ‘pale’ but I drink half the glass in one go anyways. It’s good, sort of like a thick chocolate milk. It fills me up, but not like real food does. So the rest of dinner is welcome, as I pick apart the drumstick on my plate, trying not to laugh at the way that Sarah has blown through two pieces and has grease all over her face.   
“So, Homecoming is coming up in a few weeks,” I say before quickly stuffing my mouth with mashed potatoes, not watching the look that my parents exchange and the water that comes out of Vanessa’s nose.   
“Is that something you wanted to go to?” Dad asks civilly, passing the water pitcher to Vanessa as she regains control of her lungs. I don’t know what to say, because this whole thing feels like a trap, especially since I’m kind of planning on going anyways. I already told Sophia I would, anyways.   
“....It’s not something I would be opposed to.” I say carefully, still only looking up to make sure Vanessa doesn’t choke on anything else.   
“Ah,” He responds, and that seems like the end of it, as he and Mom have a silent conversation, concluded with a head tilt from Mom that seems to mean something like ‘are you insane???’ I finish my food, and the rest of my blood, picking up my dishes and walking away. Right before I leave, though, Mom speaks up.   
“If it’s something you really want, your Dad and I will look into a plan so that you should be able to go.” She sounds reserved, but not upset per say, and I’m so shocked that I feel like I might pass out. My parents are actually allowing me to attend a school function. What could possibly go wrong from here?

8:30 pm. That is when my parents had decided my curfew was. Even if I wasn’t some dangerous creature of the night, 8:30 is a lame curfew for any high schooler. Well, I said screw that, bringing clothes to school with me one piece at a time so no one suspected anything. I was going to stay the night at Sophie’s, vampire or not. Why should I miss out on the “best years of my life” because my parents were scared? 

That night, they made me skip pictures because they couldn’t come to a conclusion if I would even show up in them, and if I didn’t, then everyone would know, obviously. Remember what I said about paranoid before? Yeah. This was normal. They dropped me off at the dance, saying they would be back at 8:30 on the dot to pick me up. I tried to not roll my eyes, popped a few capsules, and walked in. I don’t know why I had such a stubborn desire to go to this in the first place, because I started to regret it about ten minutes in. The music was loud enough to be heard in the hallways, the bass thumping in my chest as I stood by the door, watching the crowd of my peers jump around in the center of the huge room. I knew almost everyone here, but all social rules went out the window the second Party Rock Anthem came on. It wasn’t long before I was breathless, sweaty, and in the center of the crowd, jumping with the rest of my peers, completely oblivious to the time. It wasn’t until someone grabbed my arm that I realize, oh, it’s already 8:45, and my parents are going to kill me even if I supposedly can’t die. I get a mild lecture on the way home, something about how I should be better about time management, and how they hoped I had fun. I wasn’t really listening, just thinking about how Sophie's house was about a mile away from mine, on the opposite end of the neighborhood. I had given her my overnight bag (packed full of blood pills ahead of time) the day before at school. Everything was going according to plan. 

It’s midnight when my parents have been asleep for an hour, and Sophie had sent her third ‘where r u???’ text and I slipped out of my bed. I snag a water bottle of blood and pull on a hoodie over my leggings, Boston Angels ball cap pulled low over my face. I looked suspicious, but it was kind of cold, and I knew my parents would ask our neighbors first if they had seen me. The walk to Sophie’s is quiet, and I make it there in no time. It was times like this that I sort of wished that the shape-shifting part of vampire lore was true, I’m sure flying a mile is so much easier than walking it. 

Sophie is ecstatic when she opens the door, holding a red plastic cup of something that is not water, and she hugs me, dragging me up to the game room they have upstairs, where a smattering of my class is sitting in a circle, chatting, a game of hybrid spin the bottle and truth or dare paused, waiting for my arrival. I decline her offer of a drink, showing her my bottle of dark liquid instead. I plop myself down next to her in the circle, unsure about what exactly was supposed to come next, but I’m not kept waiting for long.   
“I think it’s time you caught up to the rest of us” Sophie grins, moving the bottle to point to me instead of spinning it. “Truth or Dare?”  
“Truth,” I say, smirking at her.   
“Have you ever tasted someone else’s blood?”  
The question has to be a coincidence because who on God’s green earth had done that? The girls in the circle laugh, because they think they know my answer. I panic, suddenly realizing the potential wisdom of my parents, even though I was never going to admit it.   
“No” I answer, though it’s unconvincing enough that Sophie narrows her eyes at me, in that way a girl does when she knows you have a juicy story you’re hiding. She doesn’t press just yet, thankfully, but moves on. A few more rounds happen, Charlie has her bra frozen, Meg has to drink two cups of vodka and try to make it down and then up the stairs, Gabie admits that she made out with Steven Parker under the bleachers in the gym and that is why she got suspended. I’m having fun, this all seems harmless. I’m dared to empty my bag, and I do, two shirts, a phone charger, my pills, and a bra later.   
“What are these?” Sophie asks in a sing-song voice, picking up the ziplock baggie filled with my pills.   
“Uhh… Cranberry vitamins?” I say, hoping she won’t ask any further as I reach for them. She leans back, keeping them just out of my reach. “Why are you always taking them?” she laughs, opening the bag, and pulling one out. I’m watching her like a hawk, and I know I need to tell her this isn’t funny, they’re not yours, give them back but I’m frozen.

Meg pipes up from where she was laying next to the stairwell. “Sophie, I dare you to take one! But you have to bite it.”   
I don’t even have a chance to protest before Sophie does exactly that, half of the pill full of blood squirting into her mouth, and the other half running down her chin. I’m paralyzed, I have no idea what is going to happen next. Time is moving in slow motion as the blood drips down her chip and stains her white shirt. Her eyes widen as she looks at me, shocked. I’m reminded that everyone knows what blood tastes like, and it tastes nothing like cranberry vitamins. 

“What. The. Hell.” Sophie says, and I can’t help myself because sometimes the sight of blood on someone else is just too much, and I can feel my fangs growing, and I am so so beyond screwed.  
My parents are supposed to be the only ones who know my secret. And they would flip if they knew that that night, I not only snuck out but now Sophie and four other girls know that I, Thalia Marie Aldridge, am a vampire.


End file.
